The filmmaker Angela Zumpe studied at NYU in 1981 and shared an apartment with Madison Smartt Bell, an upcoming writer. Thirty years later, she returns to New York. It is a trip in the past. Williamsburg at that time was a run down neighborhood. She meets her friends: Lisa is a professor for Gender Studies, Madisons novel „Waiting for the End of the World“ came out as a vision of 9/11. Also her big love David appears out of the mist of the past. Together, they explored discos, clubs and artists spaces. His love for men was both threatening and fascinating. A very personal memory, of the vibrant New York of the early 1980s.Der Film

Walking down the streets of Williamsburg Brooklyn today with hipsters, bodegas, corporate stores, dive bars, cabs, families etc, its almost hard to believe that Williamsburg was once a place with the burning trash cans and abandoned buildings. Most of the old Hispanic population has long since been forced out, the bohemians moved in.
In 1981 I shared an Appartement with my roommate Madison Smartt Bell in Williamsburg, who became a wellknown writer for fiction in the 90ies. A walk through our former neighborhood, a visual Music Collage, which evokes a flashback to New York in the 80ies, when spontaneous human combustion was part of the Art Szene.

May 1968: The student protests in West-Berlin are in full swing. My 21-year-old brother Reinhard openly flirts with socialist tenants, partly out of protest against our conservative father. He resolves to take drastic measures and relocate to East Germany… a complete scandal. It is the last we hear from him.
Eight months later, Reinhard is found dead. What drove him behind the Iron Curtain, and what happened to him there? Nearly forty years later, I go in search of traces of his short life in East Germany. Along the way,I encounter several people who, like my brother, went “against the current”.

Produced by Cine Impuls Leipzig and paste up production Berlin
Supported by MDR, MDM, SLM, Anhalt University of Applied Science
Distribution: Basis-Film Verleih
DVD: ICESTORM